22 August 2011 12:27 PM

THE sporting world shifted on its axis this weekend, and it has left Britain sitting a little prettier closer to its apex.

No, I am not talking of the slaughter of the indolent Indians on the cricket field but events less well-documented in the five-ring Olympic circus which will be so important to us all this time next year.

Nowhere was the shift more apparent than in Rotterdam where the British won the European dressage championship, something not achieved in the 25 years of those championships.

“Twenty years ago this would never have seemed possible. It’s truly historic moment for us,” said Carl Hester who is old enough at 44 to remember darker days when dressage was a foreign art to the British.

Hester picked up two individual silver medals on inexperienced stallion Uthopia whose extended trot, said one expert commentator, is “the stuff of dreams”. The stuff of Olympic dreams certainly. Britain has never won an Olympic dressage medal.

The equestrian world will be queuing with their trailers and their cheque-books to take Uthopia away. “We are hanging on with our fingernails until London,” said Hester. Perhaps, the stallion should be bought now for the nation, like an art-work.

The country’s women have only ever won one Olympic medal at hockey – a bronze in 1992 – and yet at least another seems possible after Sunday’s 2-0 victory by the English over Germany on their home ground in Monchengladbach in the Euro Hockey championships.

Germany were fourth in Beijing and gold medallists in 2004, and yet were beaten by a team missing Scots and Welsh from the unified squad that trains together four days each week at Bisham Abbey and will represent Britain for the first time at the Champions Trophy next January, hockey’s world championships.

Deeper into Europe in Szeged, in Hungary, Britain’s sprint canoeists were also among the medals, taking three European championship silvers, a result none would have dreamed of in the days before Tim Brabants’ Olympic medals inspired a new generation. Britain is qualified now by the results for three boats in London by which time Brabants may have recovered the K1 1000 metres form lost when he took a two-year break after winning gold in Beijing.

No surprise though in London where Shanaze Reade won a BMX World Cup event that served as an Olympic test of next year’s course, noe in Lausanne where the Brownlee brothers, Alistair and Jonathan, dominated another round of triathlon’s world championships.

Britain’s stock in sports where it has rarely, if ever, won Olympic medals is higher than could have been hoped one year out, and it should be no surprise now if the medal count in London is higher than the 100-year record achieved in Beijing.

Host nations traditionally do well. China, Greece and Spain have all surpassed previous medal totals as hosts. Spain in 1992 won more medals than they had at all previous Games combined. Twenty-five per cent is the figure most often cited as the improvement for a host.

If that should happen, Britain would win more than seventy medals and more than twenty gold. And don’t be surprised if it does. This last weekend has reminded the world that the British are coming.

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09 August 2011 11:12 AM

IT had all been going so well. On budget, on time, sponsorship target hit and tickets over-subscribed...everybody agreed that the2012 London Olympic Games was setting fresh standards for trouble-free preparations.

Until this week. The riots have wrecked the perception around the world that London can be relied upon to present the best of Olympic Games next year.

Just imagine if what is occurring across London, including in the Olympic borough of Hackney, was not happening with a little more than 350 days to go but this time next year when the Games are up and running.

The budget for security outside the Olympic venues for the Games is £600 million, paid by the government. It seemed a vast figure when it was announced. In the light of this week it seems paltry.

Money, though, is not the primary concern. It is man-power. The Metropolitan Police have been stretched to breaking this week by disturbances as far north in their manor as Enfield, as far south as Croydon and west to Ealing.

How much more stretched would the Thin Blue Line have been if huge numbers of the constabulary had been policing IOC members and VIP guests like foreign presidents in their posh West End hotels while keeping the traffic flowing along the exclusive Olympic lanes?

This week international football at Wembley Stadium and four Carling Cup games have had to be cancelled, in part obviously because the police to keep them safe are otherwise engaged. What would happen if the Olympic Games was in progress?

It would be easy to say that it could not have happened at a worse moment than this week when 200 representatives of National Olympic Committees who will be sending team next year are in London for a seminar, and when senior officials and competitors from four Olympic sports and masses of international media are here for Olympic Test events. But of course it could...it could be happening on August 6, 7 and 8, 2012.

The world now will be seeing London in a very different light. If the Watts riots in Los Angeles had happened in that city in 1983 instead of two decades earlier, would we in Britain have been looking forward to the 1984 Olympic Games? Or if the recent riots in Athens had happened in 2004?

Had that happened discussions would have started already about whether we should expose our athletes to the dangers of those cities, discussions similar to those that did take place last year when we feared for the safety of athletes going to the Commonwealth Games in Delhi after the terrorism in Mumbai.

Who are we to say that the Indian public should not be reflecting now on whether London is a safe city to send its team.

Hopefully, the disturbances will quieten down quickly but however quickly, the images left behind will be of London burning. It may change the minds of only a few about coming next year but can it now be quite the fun and Games we anticipated.

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03 August 2011 10:10 AM

BRITAIN’S gold medal count at next year’s Olympic Games in London is in decline. If you accept the latest calculations of one expert, we shall win sixteen golds, three fewer than four years ago.

Luciano Barra, a former chief executive of the Italian Olympic Committee, produces regular updates on how many medals countries can expect at the next summer and winter Games. He refuses to call them predictions but based on results in world championships they have proved an accurate guide in the past.

His latest table keeps Britain in fourth place, with the same number of golds as France but more medals. Since he does not factor into the equation home advantage his is probably an understatement.

Even so it begs a question: how much does an Olympic gold medal cost? If Britain does win sixteen, the cost of each would average £19 million, dividing the total into the investment of Lottery and taxpayers’ cash over four years. Or £17 million if you use the total invested over eight years. Or £12 million each for the 19 golds won in 2008.

It is a questionable figure, of course. It does not take account of all the other medals won or the other performances enhanced but then it does not include the cost of facilities such as the High Performance Centres constructed since 1997 when Lottery money came on tap.

They are though figures that do not differ widely from calculations made of the cost to other countries of winning gold medals.

At the International Olympic Committee congress in Sydney in 2000 an academic paper was discussed in which $15 million was given as the cost of each of Australia’s bronze medals, $40 million for gold and silver. That almost exactly equates at the exchange rate of the time with the present British figure.

Another piece of academic research done at the Universidad Carlos III in Madrid calculated the cost of gold medals at euros 40 million. Lesser medals come cheaper, of course. New Zealand reckoned each of its medals in 2008 cost US$10million. Cuba is reckoned to spend the lowest amount for each medal.

China, in contrast, is calculated to have spent $102 million for each gold medal won at the 2004 Olympic Games, the equivalent cost, as one of its academics showed, of building 3,500 new elementary schools.

The price of gold is raised as an average, of course, by the failures of the unsuccessful sports. Ten British sports received £14 million in the build-up to Athens in 2004 and won not a single medal between them. That divergence between strong and weak sports will increase next year when Britain has entries in all 26 sports as host nation.

The question of cost begets another of worth. Will the legacy of success be of value to the country? Will more young people be inspired by Olympic role models to run, jump and swim, and so, hopefully, reduce the costs of the NHS by being fitter, healthier individuals.

It does not follow necessarily. Torvill and Dean had 23 million watching their Olympic performance on television but last month it was announced that ice dancing was being dropped by the skating academy in their home city of Nottingham. There was insufficient interest.

So the Olympic sceptics could reasonably argue that it is a waste of money but next year when the majority of their countrymen are applauding Olympic success few will agree with them.

And when we bathe in the reflected glory of those gold medals won by fellow Britons, we should remember a remark of Britain’s double Olympic rowing gold medallist Steve Williams: “You can’t buy gold medals but you always have to pay for them.”